Libraries: Year In Review 1994

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Violence--both man-made and natural--and the march of technology were the watchwords for libraries in 1994. After it was firebombed in 1993, the National Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina continued its valiant efforts to maintain its irreplaceable collections, including the richest assemblage of Arabic scientific and mathematical manuscripts in Europe and an invaluable collection of materials on the outbreak of World War I. In addition to rebuilding the catalog and trying to restore the library as a working tool for the people of Sarajevo, the 58 members of the staff still on the job were seeking to produce a retrospective bibliography of Bosnia and Herzegovina. International assistance was being sought through UNESCO and elsewhere. (SeeARCHITECTURE: Sidebar.) In late July a truck bomb devastated the Jewish cultural centre and library in Buenos Aires, which served Argentina’s 300,000 Jews, the Western Hemisphere’s second largest community. Nearly 100 persons died, and half of the important collection of Judaica from Europe and South America was lost.

Natural disasters took their toll as well. Following the devastating January 17 earthquake, Los Angeles-area libraries struggled to recover from damage ranging from collapsed bookstacks to major structural damage. The library at California State University at Northridge, located at the quake’s epicentre, was badly damaged, but the main portion of the facility was reopened in late August. Thirty-nine of the County of Los Angeles Public Library’s 87 branches were initially closed owing to quake damage, but all but one had opened by mid-February. Forty-one of the Los Angeles Public Library’s 64 branches reopened two days after the quake; in mid-October two still remained closed. Partly out of concern for potential earthquake damage, the University of California completed a $40 million renovation project that featured 84 km (52 mi) of underground shelves at its Berkeley campus.

In October the U.S. Library of Congress announced an ambitious plan to convert its most important holdings into digital form by the year 2000, creating a "virtual library" that would be accessible worldwide over computer networks. A Senate subcommittee held a hearing on "Libraries and Their Role in the Information Infrastructure" on April 19. In July Maryland launched a groundbreaking program to provide free Internet access to its residents through the state’s public libraries.

Not everyone was enthralled with the march of technology, however. A long article by Nicholson Baker in the April 4 issue of The New Yorker described how the great libraries were discarding their card catalogs after replacing them with automated systems. Many U.S. libraries, notably those at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., and Harvard, were doing this, as were a consortium of French libraries, the libraries of Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Waseda University, Tokyo, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, near London. Baker criticized this practice as shortsighted and anti-intellectual. It was true, he argued, that on-line catalogs made up-to-date processing of new acquisitions possible, they could not be vandalized as card catalogs had been, entries could not be torn out, and they were convenient to use and people could use them via a telephone modem without attending the library. Nevertheless, computerized card catalogs did not always answer the same questions that could be asked of a standard card catalog and they did not always include the "tracings" (comments made on the backs of the cards) and other notes. Where there was multiple input from many different catalogs (as in any large cooperative venture, such as the OCLC [Online Computer Library Center] at Dublin, Ohio) uniform quality was difficult to maintain; countless new errors were being introduced. Card catalogs, Baker wrote, "currently do a better job of collocation [bringing like headings together] than on-line catalogues do."

Politics had its effect on library management in 1994. In England consideration was being given to removing control of libraries from the counties, where it had been since 1974, and returning it to the districts and boroughs. The reorganization would involve breaking up collections that had been developed over the past 20 years, not to mention the adverse impacts on staffs, services, and stocks.

Librarians pride themselves on catering to all sectors of the community, not excluding correctional facilities. At Wandsworth Prison in England, the "Escape with a Book" project, which used the library as a venue for exhibitions, talks, and discussion groups, won a community initiative award.

Ground was broken in late November for the $85 million George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A & M University at College Station. The 38.7-ha (90-ac) archival and educational centre was scheduled to open in 1997.

Public library circulation in the U.S. showed a modest decline of 3% in 1993, while expenditures rose by 8%, according to the annual University of Illinois survey. The U.K. reported 580 million library loans in 1993, with more than half the population using public libraries. Some £48 million was collected in overdue fines. The mission of public libraries was also seen to be changing. While a century earlier the principal aim had been to educate, inform, and entertain, that priority order had been reversed--now the aim was said to be to entertain, inform, and educate. A recent British Library Association list of the most stolen books indicated that the greatest interest was in sex, the occult, and tropical fish. Libraries were accordingly making great efforts to modernize and appeal to contemporary readers.

The long-feared closings of the graduate library schools at California’s two largest universities, the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of California at Berkeley, were announced. Their library-education programs, however, were merged into two newly created schools.

The American Library Association’s 113th annual conference drew 12,627 registrants to Miami, Fla., in June, a drop in attendance of some 4,500 from the previous year. U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton named attorney Jeanne Hurley Simon to chair the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science in late 1993. Mary Dempsey became Chicago’s city library commissioner in January 1994. Gary Strong left the position of California state librarian to head the Queens Borough (N.Y.) Public Library in September. Scott Bennett became Yale University librarian on October 1.